Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Ever since becoming a Christian, I have
read in the Book of Acts about the radical fearlessness of the
early Church, and I have long been inspired by the witness of the
early Quaker movement, which cast aside comfort and privilege to
shine a light on all the forces that held women and men in misery.
Yet, I had never myself seen this kind of communal faithfulness in
action. It took an apparently secular movement like Occupy Wall
Street to help me really understand, on an experiential level, what
an authentic movement for justice and righteousness could actually
look like.

The Occupy movement is based in a sense
of indignation that a tiny elite of our wealthiest citizens and their
corporations have virtually monopolized the political discourse in
this country. Elections have devolved into auctions, with the
candidate who is able to raise the most money from corporate sponsors
almost always emerging victorious. As public opinion is increasingly
swayed by massive corporate propaganda campaigns, all semblance of
real democracy is slipping away. The Occupy movement names these
truths, revealing them in bold acts of street theater. It creatively
disrupts the careful choreography of the wealthy elites and their
servants.

The Occupy movement is playing a
prophetic role in our society. It has ripped away the thin veneer of
legitimacy that previously masked the criminal actions of the
corporate powers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. For those
with eyes to see and ears to hear, the occupiers have revealed the
true condition of our nation.

It is amazing to see how God is using
the most unlikely of characters - anarchists and homeless people,
young idealists and unemployed construction workers - to call our
attention to the truth. Those whom our society has rejected have been
chosen to serve as the national conscience.

This has Jesus' fingerprints all over
it. Jesus always got push-back from the respectable people of his day
- religious and community leaders - for spending his time with tax
collectors and sinners, lepers and prostitutes. Jesus not only mixed
with people whom his socity deemed dirty and worthless, he called
them his friends. Jesus invited the lowest of the low to become
friends of God. He empowered society's outcasts to reveal God's love,
mercy and justice to the world.

The Occupy movement is not made up of
the "important" people of our day. Religious leaders in
particular have been cautious about getting too close to this risky
group of people who are speaking truth to power. It is one thing to
preach a sermon on peace from the safety of the pulpit - it is
another thing entirely to put our bodies and reputations on the line
to advance the cause of truth and mercy in our communities. So far,
most church people have not been ready to take the plunge.

I do believe, however, that God is
calling the Christian community to get out of our comfort zone, to
invest ourselves in the struggle for economic justice and genuine
democracy. We can no longer hide behind a false neutrality that only
emboldens the predatory behavior of the wealthiest and their
corporations. When a bully is hurting your friends, you cannot be
neutral. There are villains in this story, and they must be
confronted.

Far too often, we ourselves have been
the villains. Through selfishness and cowardice, we have participated
in the systems of injustice that are choking the dignity of millions.
Perhaps this is one reason that we are so reluctant to commit
ourselves in this new movement. If we are to stand up for truth and
righteousness, we will be forced to acknowledge the ways in which we
have fallen short. We will be forced to change.

This is hard. It is a process that will
take years and decades. But I am convinced that we must start now.
We, the ecumenical Christian Church in the United States, must take
up the frightening responsibility of living and proclaiming the
uncompromising love and prophetic justice of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is only by participating in his mission to liberate the poor and
oppressed(1) that we can ever hope to be his disciples.

This Thursday evening, at 7:00pm, some
of us who desire to become more faithful disciples of our homeless
Savior(2) will be gathering at New
York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. We call on
Christians of all denominations and communions to join with us in
issuing a call to repentance and renewal of faith in the God who
stands with the poor and the powerless. Together, we will seek to
embody the love, strength and courage of Jesus Christ through
positive action for justice, reconciliation and peace.

If you are in the DC area, please join
us. If you are in another region, please pray for us, and consider
holding a similar gathering in your area. As followers of the crucified Messiah, we can no longer be silent. The time has come to Occupy
the Church.

Let me push back a little bit. I'm a pastor in a suburban, right-of-center mainline congregation in Fairfax County across the river from you. In my context, I feel like the best I can do to build the kingdom is to battle worldly values and idols like self-reliance, consumerism, the idolatry of the nuclear family, etc, but to do so without framing it in terms of whether you should support/oppose this or that "political issue." I preached a sermon called "Occupy the kingdom of God" in which I tried to talk in eschatological/revolutionary terms about God's kingdom without using any trigger words which would have caused some people to stop listening.

In any case, realize that many churches around you are doing important evangelism to people who will stop listening if they hear certain trigger words or if the person speaking seems "punkish" or is using language or ideas associated with people who seem "punkish."

I'm not sure what the solution is. Every day, I struggle with the question of how to balance being pastoral with being prophetic. I long for the kingdom to come with power.

Morgan, really appreciate your perspective. But did Christ come to avoid trigger words that would turn people off? I have every reason to believe you and your church are sincere but are many of our problems today due to churches wanting to grow by making people comfortable versus disturbed by the Holy Spirit? Maybe you are truly a missionary and doing the right thing.

You raise some very important and I feel important issues here that go to the heart of our faith. You and readers are probably aware of this, but for those who are not, - London Regional Meeting has come out supporting from a Quaker perspective, the Occupy Movement. There has also been a very favourable article locally in our Victoria, Australia Newsletter recently as well. I stand corrected if wrong - but would be almost sure that these are by no means the only statements made on the compatibility between F/friends and the Occupy Movement's main aims - nor the last word either by any means!